1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to clock synchronization and, more particularly, to an internal signaling method to support stringent clock synchronization at a higher-layer protocol.
2. Description of the Related Art
High-precision clock synchronization is one of the most basic requirements in distributed real-time systems. Due to the unavoidable drift of local clocks, a global time base can be achieved only by means of a clock-synchronization protocol. Co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 60/362,518, filed on Mar. 7, 2002, incorporated by reference herein in its entirety, is directed to a clock-synchronization protocol for wirelessly synchronizing clock registers of wired or wireless nodes via a wireless local area network (i.e., 802.11 network). To support the clock-synchronization protocol disclosed therein, there is a need for a set of management primitives (i.e., internal signaling) which will provide information about the synchronization frames from the medium access control (MAC) to a higher-layer protocol.